Posted by Shawn M. on Oct 23rd, 2007
360 owners who have been chomping at the bit for a solid Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) have been looking forward to the release of Namco Bandai’s Eternal Sonata for quite some time, myself included. With so much hype placed upon it by the RPG community, would it pass the test?
I pre-ordered Eternal Sonata from my local GameStop, just to ensure that I would have a copy upon release (and also for the swanky free faceplate). After I got home from work, I headed out, only to be met by a sudden downpour of rain and a freak traffic jam caused by one of the major roads being shut down. What should have been a quick ten-minute trip turned into an hour, but I was determined to get what could be the next great JRPG. Could this be the series to finally unseat Final Fantasy from its throne (and my heart)? Let’s review.
Story - October 17, 1849, Paris. World-famous composer and piano virtuoso Frederic Chopin is hours from death, his tuberculosis having finally struck him down. His last hours were spent dreaming, but not the feverish dreams of past events, but rather dreams of a fantastic, musical world. While traveling in this world, he meets several individuals that will join his side. He meets a young girl named Polka, a kind-hearted soul who will soon die due to an incurable disease. As a side effect, however, she can use powerful healing magic. Shortly after, the duo meet Allegretto, the typical heroic teenager who’s handy with a sword, and Beat, a youngster who’s good with a camera. Because of the unfair taxation that they and the others of their nation face, they plan to travel to meet Count Waltz, and ask him for mercy. But when they (along with a few other characters you find with similar intentions) arrive, they are mistaken for a rebel group. They are thrown in prison (though they keep their weapons and items, go figure), and learn that the Count is up to no good. It seems that he’s developed a handy cure-all medicine called Mineral Powder, that when used excessively, will turn people into mindless slaves. He offers it cheap and untaxed to his subjects, and because of the high prices of other medicines, he plans to enslave thousands, build a huge army, and conquer all around him. Good thing there’s a rag-tag band of heroes that are handy at prison breaks!
While the base story is well enough to carry the game, Eternal Sonata is dragged down by its endless chatter. Characters will often go on long tangents about the difference between reality and illusion, often sounding like first-week philosophy students. It is as if the script tries hard to approach topics that are deep, but barely dips its toes into the waters. Instead, these very lengthy discussions often come across as trite and childish, and not even remotely pertaining to the actual storyline. It’s like I told my wife, as I was sitting through a typical dialogue: “It’s like ‘That 70’s Show‘, where the kids sit around, get high, and talk about nonsense. But at least they get it over with in a couple of minutes”. Seriously, there were cutscenes so long and pointless that the Xbox Controller shut itself down due to lack of activity.
Graphics - While the story may be a mish-mash of stoner philosophic fanfic, the graphics are just downright gorgeous. Sure, it’s straight-up anime, but damn if it doesn’t just jump out of your television and strangles you with vibrant colors and beautiful characters. It’s nice to see a next-gen title take advantage of more than just brown and green, y’know (I’m looking at you, Gears of War). Eternal Sonata is as close to a living cartoon as I’ve seen.
All that glitters isn’t gold, though. Shadows often fall on characters’ faces at odd angles, as does light. Instead of the simplistic anime-style shading, a more realistic approach would have been far-less distracting. The various monsters you find and fight are very imaginative, but there’s not a lot of variety — you’ll come across palette-swapped enemies quite often.
The environment is grand, though. Possibly one of the finest game worlds I’ve seen, and I’ll go as far to say that it ranks right up there with BioShock’s environment (in it’s own way, of course). I only wish that the game offered camera controls, so I could go in and take a closer look at things — or at least change the point of view.
Controls - Eternal Sonata’s combat system is pretty fun, at first. It’s a mixture of real-time and turn based — you get a certain amount of time to move around on the battle screen and attack an enemy. Once your party has cycled through their turn, your enemy can move around and attack for a small amount of time. While this may seem innovative and fresh at first, the majority of battles involve running up to your enemy and wailing on them until time runs out, or they die. After a while, it begins to feel like the same old turn based battles RPG’ers have played for years, only with more button mashing. Boss battles offer more of a challenge, as they tend to move around more, but it’s still more of the same formula.
Once you gain levels, your characters can use their special attacks. They range from various attack combos, in most cases, to some healing magic, status buffs, and even photography. Later on in the game, you can chain these special attacks together, letting you do some big damage. You have to pay attention to your position on the battle screen, though — your special attacks vary depending on if you’re in the light or in the dark. In fact, light and dark play a significant role in combat, as enemies change form depending on their exposure to either.
Beyond the combat system, everything is typical RPG fare. You navigate an area, search for hidden items (an exclamation point will pop up over your character’s head when you’re by a treasure), and initiate battles by walking up to monsters. If you sneak up behind a monster, you’ll get an extra battle turn, and it’s easy to do this to most of the time.
Sound - Since the game is based on Frederic Chopin, it’d be pretty silly not to have his music in it. We do get treated to his music, but only during photographic slideshows between chapters. These shows are accompanied with a brief description of his life at the time he composed the score you’re listening to. These descriptions are pretty basic, though, and were written with first-graders in mind. Luckily, you can skip these segments, and listen to the music from the menu.
In-game music is scored by Motoi Sakuraba, and fits everything quite good. We don’t get any grand and sweeping pieces like Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy scores, but everything fits in nicely, and doesn’t distract.
Voice work is hit and miss — mostly miss. Chopin doesn’t say too much later on in the game, but his voice is better than most. Polka’s voice is highly annoying, and she gets quite a few lines. The main villain, Count Waltz, sounds like your typical smug teenage villain. One character in particular, Salsa, has an odd southern accent that is nearly unbearable. Your other characters are tolerable, though Viola and Falsetto are performed quite well.
Lastly, there is a music-theme minigame withing the game. As you travel the world, you can collect score pieces — small five to six second pieces of music that you can listen to. You can meet certain NPC’s that wist to perform scores with you. If you agree, you’ll see the notes of the score piece they have. You have to decide if you have a complimentary piece to go along with it in your collection. Once you choose one, both pieces of music will be played at the same time. If they fit, you’ll receive a prize. If not, you’ll get ridiculed. You get unlimited tries, which is good — if you can’t read music, it boils down trying every score piece until you get the right one. Also, these score pieces aren’t named or numbered, so keeping track of them can get confusing.
Multiplayer - Another person can take part in battles by controlling one of the characters, but othewise, everything is handled by one player. There’s no online play, which isn’t surprising given Eternal Sonata’s genre.
Intangibles - Eternal Sonata is a short game. Counting the long and tedious cutscenes, even moderate players can get through the game in about thirty-five hours. If you choose to tackle the optional dungeon near the end, you can tack on an extra five hours.
- For whatever reason, there is a dungeon puzzle fairly early in the game that is mind-numbingly hard. You’re supposed to hit a series of switches in just the right order to move the dungeon floor to the proper alignment. However, you have no map, nor any clues as to what order to hit the switches. The dungeon is very sprawling, so it takes a very long time just to run around to see what progress has been made. I’ve prided myself in not resorting to strategy guides for RPG’s in a long, long time, but I caved in on this, as it was not a pleasant experience whatsoever.
- After you complete the game, you’re treated to a forty-five minute ending. It doesn’t make one damn bit of sense, much like the rest of the story. I’m saying this as somebody who knows and loves literature. I read Shakespeare for fun. I’ve read many of the Greek dramas, my favorite books come from the French Revolution era. Heck, even The Matrix Trilogy made sense to me. And despite all this, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of this insanity.
- Very early in the game, you can take pictures of enemies and sell them for cash. While not a new gameplay mechanic, it’s somewhat flawed. Even mediocre photos will get you a ton of money, and it won’t be long at all until you’ve got all the money you’ll ever need shortly after you start out. This lets you stock up on everything right away. Where’s the challenge? Not to mention the fact that since you find your best weapons, you’ll not have to worry about budgeting your cash. Disappointing.
- Eternal Sonata lets you play through the game a second time after you defeat it. The second playthrough will let you go on a couple new sidequests, collect some new items, and gain several achievements you couldn’t earn during the first playthrough. You keep your score pieces (and one key item if you found it the first time through), but nothing else. Also in this mode, monsters have twice the hit points and one-and-a-half times more defensive power.
- Despite being an RPG, the game is very linear. You’re restricted to what areas you can go back and forth to, so you need to fully explore an area before you leave.
- Cut scenes are long. I mean, like in the fifteen-to-twenty minute range. That would be fine is stuff was happening, but every cutscene features your characters standing around and talking. Or sitting down and talking. So much talking! The direction is very poor. For example, there is one point where Chopin plays a concert for a prince you meet. Now, it would’ve been cool had they actually shown him playing and all of the beautiful character models dancing together. Instead, the game skips right over this and everybody talks about the concert!
The Bottom Line - Here’s the deal. If you have a 360 and have been itching for a good RPG, you may want to take a chance on this. You’ll just have to deal with a poorly written and directed story. The battle system can be fun, but it’ll get repetitive quickly. If you’re a Final Fantasy veteran like me, Eternal Sonata is a distraction, at best. It’ll fill the void for RPG’s for the moment, but it won’t make you forget about Square-Enix’ far superior series. Otherwise, I’d recommend this game to people who are wanting to break into the RPG genre.
Since Eternal Sonata features Frederic Chopin, I’ll give my final thought on this game by referencing another musical superstar. Eternal Sonata is like Britney Spears in 2000 — very nice to look at, but lacking in substance and quality.
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Devin de Gruyl
October 24, 2007 at 12:41 am
Eternal Sonata is like Britney Spears in 2000 — very nice to look at, but lacking in substance and quality.
Hey, it could be worse… it could be like Britney Spears in 2007. Yikes!
[Reply]
Migo
October 24, 2007 at 11:18 am
As a musician, the idea of having Chopin in a tuberculosis-induced dream caught my attention. However, the musical names of the characters is just a bit hokey, and the poor direction you described leave me thinking if I end up playing this game it’ll be more of a rent than a buy.
[Reply]
Shawn M.
October 24, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Yeah, it’s a definite rent. The only reason to go through the game a second time is if you’re an achievement junkie. And it’s not just character names that are musical puns — everything has a musical name in this game. Items, places, ships, etc.
[Reply]
Prized Parasite
December 26, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Brittany Spears was never nice to look at.
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